Was Scottish founder of SAS just a shameless self-publicist who stole all the glory from true war heroes?
For 80 years Sir David Stirling has been lauded as a lion-hearted maverick and military genius. But a new book by a top historian paints a very different picture...
IN 1942, a downtrodden Britain desperately needed a hero. The widespread respect – even grudgingly – enjoyed in Britain by charismatic General Erwin Rommel, the commander of Hitler’s Afrika Korps, was a source of particular frustration to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Rommel’s capture of the Libyan port of Tobruk that June, leading to the surrender of 34,000 men to his German-Italian troops, was one of the worst moments not just of the western desert campaign but of Britain’s entire war.
What was required, in Churchill’s mind, was a counter to the adulation of Rommel. A soldier who was not just Rommel’s match but who was his superior in guile and courage. A warrior of whom the British could be proud.
That September, newspapers carried a scoop: the tale of the ‘Phantom Major’, a military mastermind whose covert team of guerrilla soldiers was striking terror into the hearts of Rommel and his men.
The major in question was David Stirling, and his new elite fighting squad the Special Air Service, or SAS, would become one of the most celebrated units of the British Army with its fearless motto Who Dares Wins.
Stirling was described as ‘the newest terror of the desert’ who, ‘towering 6ft 4in, is as lithe as a panther, a former boxing champion, one of the finest horsemen in the Army’. He was fluent in German, capable of fooling his way through enemy checkpoints and was, they claimed, a veritable ‘Robin Hood in battledress’.
In the space of a year, Stirling had risen from a humble lieutenant to a major with a Distinguished Service Order – a truly startling ascent. For, in reality, David Stirling was a man of limited capacity with a troubling, error-strewn history.
HE MIGHT have been the Phantom Major to the British tabloids but to his soldiers, Stirling was a liability who had repeatedly gambled with their lives in his pursuit of glory. His languor and fondness for drinking and gambling in the clubs of Cairo, meanwhile, had earned him the nickname ‘the Giant Sloth’. Born to a wealthy aristocratic family whose ancestral home was Keir House in Perthshire, Stirling, the fourth of six siblings, had underwhelmed since childhood, overshadowed academically and in charm by his older brothers Bill and Peter. His mother Margaret Fraser was also a force of nature whose father, the 13th Lord Lovat, had been aidede-camp to Queen Victoria.
When war broke out, Stirling joined the Scots Guards but struggled from the start. He lacked the discipline to knuckle down and submit to the drudgery of drilling. Meanwhile Bill, who had also trained with the Scots Guards, submitted proposals to the War Office to develop a guerrilla warfare training programme to prepare troops for special missions.
This was set up at the Commando Special Training Centre at Inverailort House in the Highlands, and among the first recruits – thanks to Bill’s intervention, and to the relief of the Scots Guards – was Stirling.
Bill quickly discovered what the Guards had known for several months: David Stirling was indolent and temperamental, a disruptive influence. Now it was Bill’s turn to look for a way to offload his wastrel sibling. The man who would, indirectly, prove his salvation was Winston Churchill.
In June 1940, the Prime Minister sent a memorandum to his chiefs of staff instructing them to establish Britain’s first special forces – the Commandos.
That November, Stirling was posted to the No8 Commando unit, alongside author Evelyn Waugh, which was despatched to North Africa under the codename Layforce.
By the start of March 1941, the Allies believed they had all but won the desert war. In two months
General Richard O’Connor’s Western Desert Force (subsequently the Eighth Army) had beaten an army of four corps during an advance of 500 miles, capturing 13,000 Italians, 400 tanks and 1,290 field guns.
The Allies were now in possession of the Libyan ports of Bardia, Tobruk and Benghazi.
Then, however, Hitler authorised the creation of the Afrika Korps under Rommel, and it quickly turned around the fortunes of the Axis powers. Army chiefs realised they needed more irregular units to exert dominance and, on the social grapevine in Cairo, Stirling heard about an idea to set up something new: a parachute unit that could undertake operations against Vichy French troops fighting with the Axis in Syria. It sparked his imagination and he begged to be part of the experiment.
After a brief lesson from an RAF officer in landing technique and parachute control, Stirling and three fellow enthusiasts flew inland for an initial jump. As they fitted their parachutes, the officer reminded them to ‘dive out as though going through water’. Stirling, instead, rather flopped out, catching his parachute on the tailplane and ripping two panels from the canopy.
He hit the earth with great force. He might have suffered concussion and even temporary paralysis of his legs. His back hurt like hell.
It didn’t take GHQ long to cancel the Syrian operation.
Bill had instructed hundreds of young men in the arts of irregular warfare at Lochailort and he knew a guerrilla fighter when he saw one. His gangly, unco-ordinated, frail younger brother, who couldn’t even jump out of an aeroplane without doing himself mischief, was not one of them. But he wanted to help David’s parachute idea, recognising his brother needed a project. So they developed a plan together – although Bill’s fingerprints were everywhere. It was approved, and in July 1941 Stirling was authorised to recruit six officers and 60 men for a unit which would be called L Detachment, SAS Brigade – the Special Air Service.
The first task was to select the officers, and among Bill’s choices was Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, star Irish rugby player and, now, exemplary soldier. Mayne had the measure of David Stirling within minutes of meeting him. They both knew Stirling would command L Detachment in name only. Psychologically, Mayne would lead. Bill knew David did not have it in him to lead a guerrilla unit by example.
Although David did help devise the parachute course, the rest of the training programme took its inspiration from what had been taught at Lochailort by Bill: expertise in small arms, close combat, explosives and navigation. By November, the SAS was about to embark on its first operation, codenamed Squatter, to coincide with the launch of Operation Crusader, which would retake Cyrenaica in Libya from the Italians. This would enable the RAF to increase supplies to the besieged island of Malta.
L Detachment’s task was to parachute into Cyrenaica at night and attack a string of Axis airfields at Gazala and Tmimi. They would then trek 50 miles inland to a rendezvous, where a motorised patrol of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a reconnaissance and raiding unit of the British Army, would be waiting.
On the night of the offensive, a
Gangly, frail and clumsy, he couldn’t even jump out of an aeroplane
storm was forecast. Stirling was warned that a parachute operation would almost certainly end in disaster, but his instinct was to press ahead. A cancellation would be damaging for morale and would reflect badly on him, too. And he was desperate to prove the doubters at GHQ wrong.
In the event, the landing on hard, stony ground left most wounded, including Stirling, and they lost much of their equipment.
Lashed by torrential rain, lightning and strong winds, with poor visibility, they failed to make the target at Tmimi and only 21 of the 55 men made it to the rendezvous.
Still, GHQ liked the idea of LRDG and L Detachment co-operating more readily. LRDG’s instructions were to attack transport and communication targets, but they were not trained for demolitions, so their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Prendergast, suggested using
the parachutists. The LRDG could drive them to targets such as aerodromes and the raiders could go in on foot. Far less risky than parachuting.
On December 8, a convoy set out to the aerodromes of Sirte and Tamet in Libya. One party led by Mayne triumphed. The Tamet aerodrome had gone up ‘like a fireworks display’ – 30 enemy airmen had been killed and 24 planes destroyed. But Stirling met with failure once again.
Having infiltrated Sirte airfield with ease, he did not notice a trench containing two sleeping Italians, who screamed like startled beasts when Stirling stumbled on them, forcing him to retreat with an SAS comrade.
In the next raid, Stirling’s reputation for ineptitude grew after he wandered into a minefield and then barked orders to his men, once more alerting the enemy to his presence. The LRDG had nicknamed L Detachment ‘Parashits’.
By the start of 1942, Stirling had a new toy to play with: canoes, much to the frustration of an amphibious elite unit called the Special Boat Section (SBS), which against their will had been placed under his command. His reputation far outstripping the reality, Stirling had by now been promoted to major and his idea to raid the Libyan port of Bouerat, just over 200 miles behind the German front line, had been approved. He would draw on the expertise of the SBS to blow up enemy shipping. It was an arduous journey over difficult terrain, and by the time they reached Bouerat, the folding kayak they were carrying was broken beyond repair.
Two months later Stirling tried again, this time targeting Benghazi, the principal supply port for the Afrika Korps but again the canoe was destroyed en route.
Finally, accepting that canoes were too fragile for the purpose, Stirling procured some small black inflatable boats for his next great enterprise.
On the night of May 22, 1942, Stirling returned again to Benghazi with five men but this time the raid wasn’t just a failure, it was a fiasco, one in which Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son, played a part.
They couldn’t get the boats to inflate, then they became lost in the back streets and finally their vehicle developed a fault that emitted an ear-piercing shriek. ‘In retrospect,’ Randolph wrote to his father, ‘we were perhaps foolish.’
Worse still, Stirling’s reckless driving on the way back on unlit desert roads led to a fatal crash.
Randolph broke two ribs and dislocated a vertebra. Journalist Arthur Merton, who had cadged a lift in
Alexandria, was killed. Lieut Col Prendergast described the excursion as ‘Gilbertian’; in other words, high farce in the best tradition of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas.
Meanwhile, Mayne had successfully destroyed 15 aircraft elsewhere, taking his total tally to 66.
Stirling had yet to get off the mark. Yet his masquerade, that of a leader of a mysterious and glamorous commando unit, fooled those in high command. The successful raids were attributed to the genius of Stirling, even though the reality was that they came despite him.
His swashbuckling persona also captivated flamboyant society photographer Cecil Beaton, who spent several weeks in Cairo during a three-month tour of the
Middle East in early 1942.
When word reached Cairo of the Phantom Major moniker, it must have sparked a mix of hilarity and indignation. Yet another botched raid on Benghazi in September 1942 would prove his worst calamity yet. The foolhardy plan was to lead a force of 214 officers in a fleet of trucks and two tanks across 800 miles of desert. Then, at the last minute, Stirling chose to approach Benghazi along the main road to the south instead of the one east as ordered by GHQ.
The LRDG decided it was madness to continue and withdrew, but Stirling pressed on. It ended with six dead, 18 wounded and five captured or missing.
GHQ recognised Stirling’s operations had to be more carefully co-ordinated and controlled, and here was their opportunity to shackle him to a desk. They promoted him to lieutenant colonel and the SAS was expanded to become a regiment. This wasn’t quite the elevation it appeared: Lieut Col Stirling was informed he must start behaving like a regimental officer, reporting to the Director of Military Operations. He was also forbidden from going out on raids.
In January 1943, Stirling came up with his most hare-brained scheme yet in his endless quest for glory. Defying orders to remain at headquarters, he would lead a small raiding party west from Tripoli, attacking enemy lines of communication and pushing into Tunisia to become the first unit from the Eighth Army to link up with the First Army of British, US and French troops as it advanced east from Algeria. What a coup it would be! A spectacular to silence his doubters, his critics and, above all, Paddy Mayne.
Having driven overnight through the desert, Stirling gave the order to stop and rest, to resume at dusk. Their mistake was not to post sentries. Stirling had removed his boots before slipping into his sleeping bag – and awoke to find a German standing over him.
The Phantom Major had been caught without firing a shot.
Stirling was desperate to return to his regiment and involved himself in several audacious escape plots from Italian and German PoW camps which ultimately failed.
When he was eventually repatriated in April 1945 – Victory in Europe was declared the following
His exploits were described as Gilbertian – in other words high farce
One mission ended with six of his men dead, 18 wounded and five missing
month – he received a nasty shock. He wasn’t wanted.
Mayne, now commander of the SAS, believed that if Stirling resumed his role he would, in a matter of weeks, undo all the good work he himself had done in transforming it into a force feared by foes.
The SAS had played a small but significant role in the successful invasion of France in 1944, earning praise from Allied supreme commander General Eisenhower for their guerrilla campaign against the Nazis.
Stirling, meanwhile, was increasingly living in a fantasy world. He was a habitue of London’s most exclusive casinos, clubs and restaurants, drinking champagne with Evelyn Waugh – the ‘Giant Sloth’ of the early war years.
Only when Mayne died in 1955 did Stirling finally write his memoir, The Phantom Major, a Hollywood fantasy in which the truth was sacrificed for titillation.
He even added an inch and a half to his height, which meant he surpassed Bill’s 6ft 5in. Such minor details mattered to him.
In 2002, 12 years after Stirling’s death, a statue was unveiled near the family plot at Keir.
It is right that one of the Stirling boys should have been honoured, but they got the wrong one.
Bill Stirling was the intellectual force behind the SAS and Paddy Mayne the physical force. David Stirling was merely its salesman.